FAYETTE Pinkney was an original member of the Three Degrees who lent her strong, soulful voice to the 1970s hits When Will I See You Again? and T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia).
The Three Degrees formed in the early 1960s when Pinkney, who was
still going to Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, joined with Shirley Porter and Linda Turner under the management of Richard Barrett, the record producer behind the Chantels and Little Anthony and the Imperials.
For more than a decade, Pinkney was the one constant in a group whose members came and went. She sang on the group's first single, Gee Baby (I'm Sorry), on their 1970 hit Maybe and on the hits for Philadelphia International Records in the 1970s that helped define the Philadelphia sound.
The group's first two singles for Philadelphia International, Dirty Ol' Man and I Didn't Know, were modest successes, but T.S.O.P., a mostly instrumental piece featuring the studio band MFSB, reached No 1 in the US in 1974 and was a big hit in the UK. When Will I See You Again?, which sold more than two million records and earned the group a gold disc, reached No 1 in the UK charts.
Their close-harmony singing made the Three Degrees a popular nightclub act. The group performed with Engelbert Humperdinck at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, and a performance at the Copacabana in Manhattan ended up in the 1975 film The French Connection.
The group also made two live albums, one recorded in Leicester and the other in Tokyo, both released in 1975.
Pinkney left the group the following year and after recording a solo album, One Degree, in 1979, she studied psychology and earned a master's degree in human services at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1985. She began working as an administrative assistant for the Medical College of Pennsylvania and rose to become an education co-ordinator there. She later counselled patients at United Behavioural Health in Philadelphia.
She is survived by a brother, Nathaniel.
Pinkney continued to sing. "I travel with a unique group called the Intermezzo Choir Ministry," she told the website thethreedegrees.com. "Yes, I do still love people and I love to make them smile."
The full article contains 396 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
